Conventional clothes hampers have largely gone out of style with the almost universal use of the automatic washer. Because of the time involved in doing one wash load, and the fact that the average household generates between five and six different types of wash loads, plus some doubles of the same type, most people find it more convenient to wash several times a week. If all of the wash is to be done in one day, it must be sorted and left in piles all over the basement or kitchen until the wash is done, and if six or seven loads are to be done, it will take all day provided one is at hand to put in the next load every 45 minutes or so.
The users of automatic washers who prefer to wash a load or two at a time throughout the week have been presented with a problem of sorting. Some keep their sorted laundry in different containers which take up much space and make it difficult for members of the family to put their soiled laundry into the proper container. If one stops to sort laundry for a particular type wash load every time he wishes to wash a load, it is a time-consuming task. There are those who put all of the accumulated laundry in the washer together, which leads to gray, dull-looking clothes.
In applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 2,895,782, provision was made for segregation of clothes of various sorts, but it was still necessary to remove the segregated clothes from the hamper to a bag or laundry basket, if the dirty clothes were to be taken any distance to a wash machine.
One of the objects of this invention is to provide a low-cost, aesthetically pleasing clothes hamper, in which provision is made not only for segregating kinds of clothes, but for providing "built-in" sub-containers, removable from the hamper, by which the segregated clothes can be carried to a wash machine, in wash-load lots.
Another object is to provide a clothes hamper with disposable sub-containers which can be replaced cheaply and easily.